


Lament of The Executioner's Axe

by Legbird



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Just Let These Old Men Rest, M/M, Reconciliation, and if you listen closely you can hear me stoking the HELLFIRE!!!! EMOTIONAL HELLFIRE!!!, follow up to Mourning Glory, who doesn't love blind 76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 20:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7283560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legbird/pseuds/Legbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reconcile with your grief, before it consumes you, eats you alive, destroys you from the inside out.</p>
<p>Pray that your grief will be forgiving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lament of The Executioner's Axe

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to the fic "Mourning Glory"- set after the fact. You can read it without the first, but I suggest sneaking a peak there if you haven't, as this fic is more for Reaper than S76.

 

   Everything comes slowly, post-reconciliation. In the midsummer of it all, there is ache and bite and pain left lingering; and it is desolate. It serves to remind them that things fall apart faster than they are built. Reconstruction is painful- asbestos dust and Plexiglas still raw under the skin. 

    You should dig and tear at it. Pull. Remove. Get it out of your system, but if it leaves, you’ll forget. You aren’t allowed to forget.

    Gabriel tells himself this, repeats it like a hymn-song to himself when he’s left alone with Jack on those low activity days. To rejoin him in the headquarters is to unlearn everything from Talon. To unlearn rage, to unlearn spite. Jack is only a partially acceptable teacher when it comes to this. He’s heard his fits, his episodes. All in some vein of feral vigilante ideology.  

     There are times, and they are few, when Gabriel catches Jack without his visor. He had only removed it once, by force, out of a desire to  _ know  _ if a hunch was right. He needed to  _ know  _ that the soldier-hero was someone that had been so unabashedly  _ his _ \- and so unabashedly  _ dead.      _

    Murdered? Manslaughtered?

    Murdered.

    Gabriel catches himself scanning Jack’s face, more often than not, looking for signs of the young commander. Bright eyes, some kind of pleasant perpetual smile. He finds neither, as Jack is still sure to say that part of himself died with Overwatch. But, Gabriel knows otherwise, knows that it was quietly dragged back from the grave when the recall began, because  _ goddamn  _ if he doesn’t want something to be fixed.

     He sees the ghost of  _ Commander _ Jack Morrison enough. It’s mostly in the eyes, once that sort of icepick blue- deteriorated to something pale and cloudy. The signs of age and exhaustion are louder than anything else, and he knows that vague sound of his  _ own  _ betrayal as the rigid state of Jack’s voice.

    He is  _ guilty _ ,  _ guilty, guilty. _

    Jack knows this, too. He shows it, only when they are alone late at night, and their world is momentarily quiet- sitting close with their façades on whatever flat surface they can abandon them on.

   “You’ve been staring.” Jack says, blunted. He faces Gabriel, brow slightly raised to ask  _ why  _ without explicitly saying so. Gabriel shakes his head, eyes closed while a hand finds purchase in Jack’s hair with a barely-there sort of motion. As if he’s fading from the conversation. He doesn’t answer.

   “Don’t give me the silent treatment,” Jack states firmly, brow furrowed when he finally makes eye contact- squinting at him with a sort of half-baked annoyance.

    “You can’t see,” Gabriel says, opening one eye to glance at Jack. “Your eyes are clouded over, and you won’t stop squinting at me. Isn’t that the case?” 

He is met with prolonged silence, then a sigh- finally leaning back into Gabriel’s touch.

   “Had to use my visor since Switzerland.” He says, almost inaudible. Gabriel hears something close to shame in this, and a part of him curls on the inside. Another thing to add to the list. “I can just  _ barely  _ make out your face.” Jack adds.

  “You probably wouldn’t want to see it. I’m not the same man you knew.” Gabriel quips, knowing full well the state of deterioration has left him vaguely flushed and gaunt, the whites of his own eyes gone black from  _ something. _ Jack doesn’t miss a beat, though- mouth quirking into a frown as fast as possible. His hand, unarmored for once, reaches up to rub at Gabriel’s jaw with a quiet rumble of disagreement.

    “I don’t need to see it. I can  _ feel  _ it.” 

     Gabriel’s jaw clenches, body freezing with every ounce of  _ god fucking damn it  _ because he knows that Jack doesn’t mean any actual harm in this. But, something about it is like swallowing glass, he wants Jack’s hand off his face and away from him- but he leaves it there. Basking in it. Almost slightly offended when it moves- thumb tracing scars at the corner of his mouth. They are the most fluent in body language, Gabriel realizes.

 “Is  _ that  _ why you aren’t afraid of me?” He asks- reciprocating the touch. “Because you just read me  _ so  _ well?”

    Jack is quiet for a heartbeat, before breaking into a ghost of some laughter. “You aren’t so damn hard to read. You don’t scare me because, well. If you were going to actually kill me, actually be  _ Reaper _ \- you would have done it by now.”

     “I can still kill you.” Gabriel says, reaffirming the idea that he is, in fact, still capable of terrible things. Still awful.

    “Gabriel.” Jack says, blunt and demanding, a call to say  _ listen, goddamn it.  _ “I don’t need  _ eyes  _ to see that you’re absolutely full of shit.”

    They stare at each other, Gabriel taken aback by the sheer near-anger of the tone that was followed by silence-breaking laughter from the soldier. Everything is jarring- as if the moment warped back to thirty years prior, where they were both still unscathed and close and together. Where laughing like that was just as easy as breathing. He realizes that they  _ are  _ still close, echos of their past still very much bound together. Everything changes, everything stays the same.

    Gabriel, in the midst of putting all his feelings in order and letting Jack finally rest against his chest- catches his breathing mid-hitch. There is a slight wave of fear, or protective urge, or just  _ something  _ that makes him hold Jack a little closer. As if the fact that he  _ can’t  _ kill him being known means that it’s time to protect him more than ever.

       He doesn’t need the protection, Gabriel knows this. But, insurance against himself is always good. His own arm goes up in smoke, draped just above Jack’s hip. Maybe to be menacing, to threaten the emptiness of the room and let the silence know that Jack is his. Still his. 

He manages a laugh through the sheer nonsense of it all, not as  _ Reaper,  _ but as  _ Gabriel _ \- and he catches Jack smile.

      Just a bit.


End file.
